Meet Joshua Nkomo, the Military Strategist
by Sunday Mail Reporter |
Sunday, Jul 6, 2014
Brigadier Abel Mazinyane (Rtd)
Before joining the armed struggle, I and most of my colleagues in training at Morogoro, Tanzania, had not met any of the Zimbabwean nationalists. James Chikerema, George Silundika, Edward Ndlovu, George Nyandoro and JZ Moyo were our first.
At Morogoro, we had among us some who were coming from Smith’s detention centres in Rhodesia. These were Jevan Maseko, Ben Maphosa, Hwadalala Nyathi, and James Sakupwanya. These people had met Joshua Nkomo before, lucky for them.
In 1974, we all got our chance to meet this great man, Joshua Nkomo, in-person, and other nationalists who had been incarcerated in Rhodesia when they visited Zambia.
After the death of JZ on January 22 1977, Joshua Nkomo returned to Zambia, this time not to visit but to lead the armed struggle. The party promoted him from commander to supreme commander of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZPRA) and Alfred Nikita Mangena was also promoted from chief of staff to commander of ZPRA.
Joshua Nkomo’s first task was to tour all the camps and officiate at all ZPRA pass-out parades. Addressing guerrillas who had just completed training, his orders were: “As you go home (Zimbabwe), remember you are not traditional chiefs so do not establish kangaroo courts.
“You are not ‘sangomas’ so do not start sniffing out witches. Your first port of call is the local party leadership. Annihilate the enemy; preserve your life and that of the people of Zimbabwe.”
Those were always his parting words. Joshua Nkomo was hands-on on ZPRA issues.
In 1997, he was the reviewing officer at a pass-out parade in Boma, Angola, where a force of 2 000 ZPRAs had just completed training. He demanded from the Russian and Cuban trainers that the pass-out include a mock attack.
Accompanying him was Alfred Nikita, Elliot Masengo (chief of training), Abel Mazinyane (chief of military intelligence) and Asaff Ndinda (deputy chief of operations). The Russian and Cuban instructors together with Zimbabwean instructors unleashed 2 000 armed men with heavy and small arms for this exercise.
I registered my security concerns to Mdala because the exercise was going to use live ammunition. The old man brushed the concerns aside.
I had never witnessed such fire power and up to today have yet to see anything to match it. As ZPRA chief of intelligence, nothing could convince me that within the 2 000 that were passing out, there was no enemy spy.
I felt as if the struggle for Zimbabwe had been placed on my tiny shoulders. However, the exercise ended without mishap; the only casualties being Josh’s lady secretary who collapsed and our eardrums. Josh watched the whole exercise and later inspected the soldiers. He visited every camp after bombardment, sometimes personally, and supervised mass burials.
Mdala Josh had an office at Zimbabwe House in Lusaka, the party headquarters outside Zimbabwe.
He, however, established a separate defence headquarters about 500 metres from ZPRA headquarters. This headquarters fully equipped him to keep his fingers on the pulse of the army.
A defence council was also created to put in place a forum for all stakeholders to sit down and formulate a strategy for the whole struggle.
This overarching strategy would then guide strategies of various departments to work towards fulfilling the grand objective.
Joshua Nkomo was always concerned about the welfare of the children living at our camps that he introduced programmes under which they would interact with Zimbabwean families based in Zambia.
A day was set when families would be invited to visit Victory Camp.
Games would be organised.
“Victory Camp children will interact with children living a normal family life so that they do not forget to be children,” he said.
In 1979, as the supreme commander, Joshua Nkomo issued orders for “Turning Point” to ZPRA forces. ZPRA had deployed forces in every corner of Rhodesia. All these forces were involved in guerrilla warfare.
This type of warfare had exhausted the enemy, but not firmly secured territory.
Turning Point focused on permanently securing the ground for ZPRA and denying it to the enemy. To achieve this, ZPRA was to deploy in large units (regular battalions) and attack big targets (economic and military installations).
This was targeted at turning semi-liberated zones into fully-liberated zones that would be run by people‘s committees.
Ground captured by ZPRA would be denied to the enemy.
The “Forward Ever Backward Never” slogan was being put into practice. Guerrillas would continue to harass the enemy, forcing him to operate in bigger units that formed prime targets for ZPRA’s regular units (battalions).
Under Joshua Nkomo’s leadership, ZPRA became a formidable force that General Walls said: “Given ZPRA, I can conquer Africa.”
Brigadier Abel Mazinyane (Rtd) is a former member of the ZPRA High Command
Story of Dr Joshua Nkomo, as never before been told
by Sunday Mail Reporter
Sunday, Jul 6, 2014
Lawson Mabhena
He was reported by the Rhodesian Press as being the first “native millionaire” and was the first transport operator to bring a diesel-powered bus to Matabeleland.
Prior to that, Cde Tafi Moyo was an ordinary, oppressed black man in a country under a ruthless white minority government.
He had problems transporting his chickens to Bulawyo for sale as there was limited space in buses that were crowded with passengers and luggage.
To resolve this, he came up with the idea of loading goods atop the bus on a “carrier”. One bus operator agreed to let him try out this idea, which led him to opening Perks and Crailer, a metal works company that was based in Bulawayo.
The carrier is now synonymous with “chicken” buses.
Now 108 years old, the pioneering businessman remembers his friend, Vice-President Joshua Nkomo, who died in this winter month 15 years ago.
“I met Nkomo at his father’s homestead in Semokwe Reserve. He was a grown man then, although his siblings were very young and I would give them a lift to school. When he left the rural areas we remained close friends as his house in Barbourfields was near my home in Mzilikazi suburb’s O Square.
“Whenever he wanted to travel in order to attend various meetings, I gave him my vehicle and a driver who drove him. I remember (one) time I drove him myself to Kezi, Mbembeswana and Malaba,” Cde Moyo told us in an interview at his Bulawayo home last Thursday.
Cde Moyo worked with Dr Nkomo right at the start of the fight for Independence and saw the formation, banning and disbanding of all the political parties the late Vice President formed.
He and Dr Nkomo started their fight for equal rights before the formation of the country’s first political party, the African National Congress in 1949.
When Sir Raphael “Roy” Welensky, who later became the second prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, hosted a meeting in the early 1950s to drum up support for the union, Dr Nkomo, Cde Moyo and the late Cde Charlton Cezani Ngcebetsha represented Southern Rhodesian blacks as delegates to the meeting.
The three were among the first nationalists who protested creation of the federation.
“During the meeting at Lake Nyasa, all the delegates were asked about what they thought about federation except for us. I then raised my hand and said: ‘What you are telling us is what you will do for us and not what we want. So why did you call us here? You want us (Southern Rhodesia) to be a path for Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Botswana?’ I immediately resigned from the meeting. I did not even eat their food. I bought some food and shared with the workers at the hotel.
“After the meeting, Ngcebetsha and Nkomo told me that they were in agreement with me,” the humble Cde Moyo — who does not count himself among the country’s liberators — says.
Perhaps one of his major contributions to the struggle for Independence was the 330 pounds he gave Dr Nkomo as airfare to attend the Federation Conference in London, a meeting that eventually led to the disbandment of the federation.
He strongly believes Dr Nkomo was an astute leader whose magnanimous character cannot be easily found. Dr Nkomo, he says, fought for the basic rights black Zimbabweans did not enjoy before taking up arms.
“We had no rights and we were not allowed to buy land, even if we had the money. I once bought a farm in Khami and after making all the payments the farm owner was so happy he even gave me some calves. But when I was about to move onto the farm, the white regime said I was not allowed to own such fertile land.
“I went to Harare where I was given someone who would show me the ‘right’ land for blacks. The man took me to Sedemanyemba, a place full of river sand. I was not even allowed to have a lot of cattle on the piece of land as there was a shortage of grazing space. I refused to settle there as I could keep more cattle at my rural home.
“It was events like these that would get Nkomo working. He started to mobilise the people using issues like that of land, which he was very passionate about.”
Dr Nkomo’s political work came at a price. He, and other nationalists like President Mugabe, would be confined to their rural homes and, eventually, prison.
The support services Cde Moyo gave nationalist leaders like Dr Nkomo landed him in Wha Wha, Gonakudzingwa and Marondera prisons.
“When Nkomo got detained at his brother’s homestead in Simukwe and Mugabe got detained in Zvimba, we had to come up with a plan as to how the two would continue to communicate. I volunteered to transport letters between the two. I knew Semokwe very well and I had been to Zvimba once as a maselengwana (slave) for three years.
“Nkomo warned me about not taking this duty seriously as the Rhodesians would kill me if they caught me with the letters. The enemy eventually got wind of the fact that I was transporting letters between the two and I had to dump my typewriter – which they were using (to write letters) – in a river to conceal the evidence.”
When the Rhodesian forces upped their war against freedom fighters, Cde Moyo cheated death after having visited Dr Nkomo’s house in Zambia just before it was bombed. Rhodesian commandos disguised as Zambian troops attacked the home in a predawn raid on April 13, 1979.
On various occasions when Dr Nkomo was imprisoned, Cde Moyo was to assist his wife, MaFuyana, and their children with groceries and moral support.
“Sometimes when I was driving from the rural areas and happened to hit some hares along the way, I would take one to my family and one to Nkomo’s family,” he reminisces.
After Independence, Dr Nkomo and Cde Moyo would take separate paths – politics and business, respectively. However, they would remain close friends, brothers even, united by the marriage of their children; Dr Nkomo’s son Sibangilizwe, and Mr Moyo’s daughter, Sipiwo.
Dr Nkomo would also jokingly refer to his youngest daughter, Sehlule, as Cde Moyo’s wife.
Mr Moyo, whose Try Again stores and buses have been a part of rural Matabeleland for decades, started with chickens before selling goats. He later went into cattle, which he drove all the way from Kezi to Bulawayo.
Before buying his first van, a Nissan Vanette, he got around by scotch cart. His first bus was an Albeon.
He had four wives, MaMnkandla, MaNdlovu, MaNcube and MaDube, who are all late, and 20 children. Five of the children died over the years.
 |
| Standing: Ambros Mutinhiri (Chief of Staff), Dr Joshua Nkomo, Alfred Nikita Mangena (Commander), Harold Chirenda (Chief of Training), Gordon Munyanyi (then Chief of Military Intelligence), Cephas Cele (Chief of Personnel) and Sam Mfakazi (Chief of Logistics) in Dr Nkomo’s office in Zambia in 1977. |
Sunday, Jul 6, 2014
Brigadier Abel Mazinyane (Rtd)
Before joining the armed struggle, I and most of my colleagues in training at Morogoro, Tanzania, had not met any of the Zimbabwean nationalists. James Chikerema, George Silundika, Edward Ndlovu, George Nyandoro and JZ Moyo were our first.
At Morogoro, we had among us some who were coming from Smith’s detention centres in Rhodesia. These were Jevan Maseko, Ben Maphosa, Hwadalala Nyathi, and James Sakupwanya. These people had met Joshua Nkomo before, lucky for them.
In 1974, we all got our chance to meet this great man, Joshua Nkomo, in-person, and other nationalists who had been incarcerated in Rhodesia when they visited Zambia.
After the death of JZ on January 22 1977, Joshua Nkomo returned to Zambia, this time not to visit but to lead the armed struggle. The party promoted him from commander to supreme commander of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZPRA) and Alfred Nikita Mangena was also promoted from chief of staff to commander of ZPRA.
Joshua Nkomo’s first task was to tour all the camps and officiate at all ZPRA pass-out parades. Addressing guerrillas who had just completed training, his orders were: “As you go home (Zimbabwe), remember you are not traditional chiefs so do not establish kangaroo courts.
“You are not ‘sangomas’ so do not start sniffing out witches. Your first port of call is the local party leadership. Annihilate the enemy; preserve your life and that of the people of Zimbabwe.”
Those were always his parting words. Joshua Nkomo was hands-on on ZPRA issues.
In 1997, he was the reviewing officer at a pass-out parade in Boma, Angola, where a force of 2 000 ZPRAs had just completed training. He demanded from the Russian and Cuban trainers that the pass-out include a mock attack.
Accompanying him was Alfred Nikita, Elliot Masengo (chief of training), Abel Mazinyane (chief of military intelligence) and Asaff Ndinda (deputy chief of operations). The Russian and Cuban instructors together with Zimbabwean instructors unleashed 2 000 armed men with heavy and small arms for this exercise.
I registered my security concerns to Mdala because the exercise was going to use live ammunition. The old man brushed the concerns aside.
I had never witnessed such fire power and up to today have yet to see anything to match it. As ZPRA chief of intelligence, nothing could convince me that within the 2 000 that were passing out, there was no enemy spy.
I felt as if the struggle for Zimbabwe had been placed on my tiny shoulders. However, the exercise ended without mishap; the only casualties being Josh’s lady secretary who collapsed and our eardrums. Josh watched the whole exercise and later inspected the soldiers. He visited every camp after bombardment, sometimes personally, and supervised mass burials.
Mdala Josh had an office at Zimbabwe House in Lusaka, the party headquarters outside Zimbabwe.
He, however, established a separate defence headquarters about 500 metres from ZPRA headquarters. This headquarters fully equipped him to keep his fingers on the pulse of the army.
A defence council was also created to put in place a forum for all stakeholders to sit down and formulate a strategy for the whole struggle.
This overarching strategy would then guide strategies of various departments to work towards fulfilling the grand objective.
Joshua Nkomo was always concerned about the welfare of the children living at our camps that he introduced programmes under which they would interact with Zimbabwean families based in Zambia.
A day was set when families would be invited to visit Victory Camp.
Games would be organised.
“Victory Camp children will interact with children living a normal family life so that they do not forget to be children,” he said.
In 1979, as the supreme commander, Joshua Nkomo issued orders for “Turning Point” to ZPRA forces. ZPRA had deployed forces in every corner of Rhodesia. All these forces were involved in guerrilla warfare.
This type of warfare had exhausted the enemy, but not firmly secured territory.
Turning Point focused on permanently securing the ground for ZPRA and denying it to the enemy. To achieve this, ZPRA was to deploy in large units (regular battalions) and attack big targets (economic and military installations).
This was targeted at turning semi-liberated zones into fully-liberated zones that would be run by people‘s committees.
Ground captured by ZPRA would be denied to the enemy.
The “Forward Ever Backward Never” slogan was being put into practice. Guerrillas would continue to harass the enemy, forcing him to operate in bigger units that formed prime targets for ZPRA’s regular units (battalions).
Under Joshua Nkomo’s leadership, ZPRA became a formidable force that General Walls said: “Given ZPRA, I can conquer Africa.”
Brigadier Abel Mazinyane (Rtd) is a former member of the ZPRA High Command
Story of Dr Joshua Nkomo, as never before been told
by Sunday Mail Reporter
Sunday, Jul 6, 2014
Lawson Mabhena
He was reported by the Rhodesian Press as being the first “native millionaire” and was the first transport operator to bring a diesel-powered bus to Matabeleland.
Prior to that, Cde Tafi Moyo was an ordinary, oppressed black man in a country under a ruthless white minority government.
He had problems transporting his chickens to Bulawyo for sale as there was limited space in buses that were crowded with passengers and luggage.
To resolve this, he came up with the idea of loading goods atop the bus on a “carrier”. One bus operator agreed to let him try out this idea, which led him to opening Perks and Crailer, a metal works company that was based in Bulawayo.
The carrier is now synonymous with “chicken” buses.
Now 108 years old, the pioneering businessman remembers his friend, Vice-President Joshua Nkomo, who died in this winter month 15 years ago.
“I met Nkomo at his father’s homestead in Semokwe Reserve. He was a grown man then, although his siblings were very young and I would give them a lift to school. When he left the rural areas we remained close friends as his house in Barbourfields was near my home in Mzilikazi suburb’s O Square.
“Whenever he wanted to travel in order to attend various meetings, I gave him my vehicle and a driver who drove him. I remember (one) time I drove him myself to Kezi, Mbembeswana and Malaba,” Cde Moyo told us in an interview at his Bulawayo home last Thursday.
Cde Moyo worked with Dr Nkomo right at the start of the fight for Independence and saw the formation, banning and disbanding of all the political parties the late Vice President formed.
He and Dr Nkomo started their fight for equal rights before the formation of the country’s first political party, the African National Congress in 1949.
When Sir Raphael “Roy” Welensky, who later became the second prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, hosted a meeting in the early 1950s to drum up support for the union, Dr Nkomo, Cde Moyo and the late Cde Charlton Cezani Ngcebetsha represented Southern Rhodesian blacks as delegates to the meeting.
The three were among the first nationalists who protested creation of the federation.
“During the meeting at Lake Nyasa, all the delegates were asked about what they thought about federation except for us. I then raised my hand and said: ‘What you are telling us is what you will do for us and not what we want. So why did you call us here? You want us (Southern Rhodesia) to be a path for Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Botswana?’ I immediately resigned from the meeting. I did not even eat their food. I bought some food and shared with the workers at the hotel.
“After the meeting, Ngcebetsha and Nkomo told me that they were in agreement with me,” the humble Cde Moyo — who does not count himself among the country’s liberators — says.
Perhaps one of his major contributions to the struggle for Independence was the 330 pounds he gave Dr Nkomo as airfare to attend the Federation Conference in London, a meeting that eventually led to the disbandment of the federation.
He strongly believes Dr Nkomo was an astute leader whose magnanimous character cannot be easily found. Dr Nkomo, he says, fought for the basic rights black Zimbabweans did not enjoy before taking up arms.
“We had no rights and we were not allowed to buy land, even if we had the money. I once bought a farm in Khami and after making all the payments the farm owner was so happy he even gave me some calves. But when I was about to move onto the farm, the white regime said I was not allowed to own such fertile land.
“I went to Harare where I was given someone who would show me the ‘right’ land for blacks. The man took me to Sedemanyemba, a place full of river sand. I was not even allowed to have a lot of cattle on the piece of land as there was a shortage of grazing space. I refused to settle there as I could keep more cattle at my rural home.
“It was events like these that would get Nkomo working. He started to mobilise the people using issues like that of land, which he was very passionate about.”
Dr Nkomo’s political work came at a price. He, and other nationalists like President Mugabe, would be confined to their rural homes and, eventually, prison.
The support services Cde Moyo gave nationalist leaders like Dr Nkomo landed him in Wha Wha, Gonakudzingwa and Marondera prisons.
“When Nkomo got detained at his brother’s homestead in Simukwe and Mugabe got detained in Zvimba, we had to come up with a plan as to how the two would continue to communicate. I volunteered to transport letters between the two. I knew Semokwe very well and I had been to Zvimba once as a maselengwana (slave) for three years.
“Nkomo warned me about not taking this duty seriously as the Rhodesians would kill me if they caught me with the letters. The enemy eventually got wind of the fact that I was transporting letters between the two and I had to dump my typewriter – which they were using (to write letters) – in a river to conceal the evidence.”
When the Rhodesian forces upped their war against freedom fighters, Cde Moyo cheated death after having visited Dr Nkomo’s house in Zambia just before it was bombed. Rhodesian commandos disguised as Zambian troops attacked the home in a predawn raid on April 13, 1979.
On various occasions when Dr Nkomo was imprisoned, Cde Moyo was to assist his wife, MaFuyana, and their children with groceries and moral support.
“Sometimes when I was driving from the rural areas and happened to hit some hares along the way, I would take one to my family and one to Nkomo’s family,” he reminisces.
After Independence, Dr Nkomo and Cde Moyo would take separate paths – politics and business, respectively. However, they would remain close friends, brothers even, united by the marriage of their children; Dr Nkomo’s son Sibangilizwe, and Mr Moyo’s daughter, Sipiwo.
Dr Nkomo would also jokingly refer to his youngest daughter, Sehlule, as Cde Moyo’s wife.
Mr Moyo, whose Try Again stores and buses have been a part of rural Matabeleland for decades, started with chickens before selling goats. He later went into cattle, which he drove all the way from Kezi to Bulawayo.
Before buying his first van, a Nissan Vanette, he got around by scotch cart. His first bus was an Albeon.
He had four wives, MaMnkandla, MaNdlovu, MaNcube and MaDube, who are all late, and 20 children. Five of the children died over the years.
No comments:
Post a Comment